Interview with Sidewise Author Dwight L. MacPherson Part Three: Why Do Steampunk?
By Papa Llama - November 22, 2009
from Sidewise p. 11
Previous Posts:
Interview with Sidewise Author Dwight L. MacPherson Part 1: Why Do Webcomics?
Interview with Sidewise Author Dwight L. MacPherson Part 2: Why Do Zuda?
Here we conclude our interview with Zuda Comics webcomic competition winner Dwight L. MacPherson, author and creator of the series Sidewise along with quite a bit more.
Llama: Is this a story that you’ve had brewing in your for quite a while or did it come to you recently?
MacPherson: I wrote this about a year and a half ago. I was reading Whitechapel Gods – it’s a steampunk novel – and my 13-year-old said, ‘What’s steampunk?’ And I said, ‘Hmm.’ I grew up reading Edgar Allen Poe, he’s the father of steampunk. If people want to admit it, fine; if they don’t, that’s fine too. But then you have writers like H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. I grew up reading that stuff. And ofcourse they had the Around the World in 80 Days movie, The Time Machine movie, and then The Wild, Wide West TV show. I loved that stuff. So I kind of grew up loving steampunk, but I didn’t know what it was. As you well know, kids don’t have that kind of stuff nowadays.
Llama: For both of us, in the afternoons after school we could see The Wild, Wild West. The word “steampunk” did not exist, but that’s what it was.
MacPherson: Yes, exactly. Well, that’s why I wanted my son to know. Rather than saying to him, ‘Here’s an H. G. Wells book, sit down and read it,’ I said, ‘I’m gonna make a comic,’ to explain to him what steampunk is all about.
Llama: So if your son asks you a lot of questions, he might have to wait a long time to get the answers.
MacPherson: Right! (laughs) So I let him read the script and I showed him some stuff on YouTube. I let him watch City of Lost Children, different things like that. Metropolis, the anime version, and Steamboy and Howl’s Moving Castle. He was like, ‘Wow, this is really cool,’ so when he actually saw the art of Sidewise he kind of had an idea in his head that it’s right around Victorian era when steam was prevalent, coal and steam power, but they had gadgetry that was far advanced for that time.
Llama: What kind of recent steampunk works might you recommend somebody read if they want to start getting into it?
MacPherson: I’m a huge novel reader. I try to read at least 12 books a year. I usually end up going over that, but that’s my bare minimum. Girl Genius is an excellent all-ages steampunk graphic novel. Wow, what have I read recently? The Anubis Gates – that’s fantastic. The Stress of Her Regard is also steampunk-ish. It takes place during the same period and stars Keats, Shelley, and Byron fighting vampires which are actually muses is a really cool idea because it doesn’t have to have the gadgetry. Steampunk is considered as fantasy offshoot. That’s why you have the historical people. That’s why you have the magical things happen. There’s a lot of fantasy involved in the genre as well as science fiction.
Llama: If you landed back in time like your character but only a year ago and came face to face with yourself from then, what would you tell the you of one year ago who had yet to go through the Zuda competition?
MacPherson: I would tell me to follow my gut, to do whatever I could to get people over there to vote just like I did. I contacted Newsarama and CBR. I used the regular social networking sites like twitter, Facebook, MySpace. I did a couple of cons during that time, just local cons in Virginia and Tennessee. I talked to people, I had the computer there to show the video with the trailer for the webcomic. People voted. I don’t think I would do anything differently. I think I did everything I could possibly do. I guess I would just say, ‘Fight until the end and don’t give up.’
That advice applies to an awful of things in life.
Thanks for reading!
Dwight, thanks for talking!
Read Sidewise every week at http://zudacomics.com/sidewise.
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